


Time Travel (Don’t Leave Me Remix)

by navaan



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death referenced, Civil War, Director of SHIELD Tony Stark, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Steve Rogers, Iron Man: Director of SHIELD, Kissing, M/M, Remix, Rescue, Sort of A Fix-It or Not, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29409261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Time travel always came with the inherent dangers of messing things up even more instead of setting them right.Post-CW Steve is dead and Tony has a time travelling mission on his hands. He's not there to fix the past. He should just stay away... but Steve's in trouble!
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43
Collections: 2021 Captain America/Iron Man Remix Relay





	Time Travel (Don’t Leave Me Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Isn’t it a little too late?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28938126) by [masterlokisev159](https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterlokisev159/pseuds/masterlokisev159). 



> [**Isn’t it a little too late?**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28938126) (2228 words) by [**masterlokisev159**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterlokisev159) and was remixed into [**Encounter (A Stitch in Time Remix)**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29435115) (2444 words) by [**Neverever**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever). [Go read the whole awesome chain here.](https://cap-ironman.dreamwidth.org/2137848.html)

Time Travel (Don’t Leave Me Remix)

Time travel always came with the inherent dangers of messing things up even more instead of setting them right. And only a few weeks back, when Steve Rogers and the Invaders of World War II era had been thrown into the present he had done everything in his power to stop them from learning anything that could force a change in the timeline which could end up jeopardizing their present and maybe the stability of the multiverse. They’de been there before and Tony had no wish to complicate the world even further… even though...

It had been hard to see a Steve who knew nothing of him — alive and well, but young and so different from the man he’d loved and then betrayed. It hadn’t been hard at all to keep the knowledge of all that from the younger Steve and send him back though, so that this Steve could go in the ice, could be found by the Avengers and for a time love Tony.

Had it been so easy to do the right thing and preserve the timeline _because_ it had been the selfish thing to do? 

After all he could have tried to warn Steve — about registration, about Tony himself, about the machinations that would lead to Cap’s assasination on those courthouse steps…

_Why didn’t I tell him?_

The answer was too easy.

He hadn’t wanted to see the hatred in those lively blue eyes aimed at him — _not again_.

Not when he'd recently had a public breakdown at Steve’s funeral, unable to cope with the idea that Steve was gone forever and there would be no making up, no understanding and no explanations after this fight that had pulled them apart. Steve was gone and despite all Tony had done to keep people safe in these unsafe times, it was Tony’s fault.

Now here he was — thrown back in time himself to realize he was in that opposite spot this time around. This time he knew everything that was coming. He could change events if he chose to, hoping for a better outcome.

But should he?

Was there any hope of making things better instead of worse?

The answer surely was no. 

The danger of changing the past was always too great. After all, he was here to stop Kang the Conqueror from meddling in the timeline before half of the east coast got wiped off the face of the earth and not to do the selfish thing and right his own mistakes. Even if it meant saving Steve... It wasn’t just what Iron Man needed to do or his duty as Director of SHIELD — it was the right thing to do to stay on mission and see this through, no deviations from the plan. He had gone over the calculations with Reed countless times and it had sounded simple enough: Go in, stop changes to the timeline, timehop to the next incursion point, stop changes to events there and come home with nobody the wiser.

It had all been easy. Nothing had fazed him. Not even jumping right into the time when Steve had to carry Tony’s drunk and broken self from a burning building to save him — because that was the past. It had been painful to see and relive but Tony’s mistakes stood and he had made sure events played out as they had and moved on. 

_Now_ , finding himself at the last timeline changing event and closer to his own present, he realized it was much harder when grief was still gnawing away at you.

The first miss-calculation was thinking that he could keep his arrival a secret from his own slightly younger self from that point in time — which had led to one terrible conversation already upon arrival.

“Can I at least ask why you’re here? We don’t meddle with time on a whim? I’m not that stupid. So — what goes wrong? How bad is it?” his slightly younger self had asked and given him the paranoid once over that Tony had expected. “What did we miss? What do we mess up?”

 _Everything_ , he had wanted to answer but forced himself not to. “Nothing yet. Just let me make sure Kang’s agents don’t get to meddle and I’ll be out of your hair in a heartbeat.”

“I’ll keep an eye on you,” the other Tony had told him sternly.

He’d huffed. Trust Tony not to trust Tony. They were smart like that. And Tony was right to be distrustful, too.

Feeling a bitter need to leave _something_ in the Extremis code for himself to find — a warning, a note, a dressing down — he’d instead swooped out to make sure the last point in time Kang was targeting would be defended. 

The incident itself seemed unremarkable — terrorists attacking a building in Manhattan. Why had Kang chosen this moment to change?

The building wasn’t SHIELD associated, or a high security lab or even a bank. But something about that office building had sparked Kang’s interest. Tony checked his own databases to see how the incident played out without any outside forces getting involved, and tried to gauge where things would go wrong, when suddenly Extremis, scanning the people inside the building, alerted him to a familiar presence.

Captain America.

His these-days-functioning-but-broken-nontheless heart missed a beat and he froze in mid air. Protected by the stealth capabilities of his armor that moment of surprise at least didn’t make him more of a target. 

Steve had been involved, of course.

That was why the incident had been resolved without alerting Tony or the Avengers or anyone else. Steve had resolved it single-handedly and kept it quiet because he was technically a fugitive at this point in time because SHRA had passed.

All Tony needed to do now was make sure Steve got to resolve this quietly and without any hiccups. Everything would play out as it had before. No big deal.

He hadn’t so much as thought it, when all hell broke loose. Hydra gunmen were swarming the building. Up until now having kept a low profile, Steve jumped into action. Tony kept an eye out for him via the security cameras that lined the upper floors and instead focused on finding the 31st century technology that was scattered throughout the building.

“I can’t believe it,” he cursed when he realized that Kang had been planning to cause an explosion event of the magnitude that they were trying to prevent only a year later right here and now. He rushed to dismantle the device on the lower floor, but conventional bombs were already going off in the upper floors, where Steve was fighting goons with the athletic skill and well aimed punches that soon Tony himself would be on the receiving end of again. They would have their first fist fight at the mansion in only a few weeks. And that would only be the beginning...

A shiver went down his spine, remembering Steve smashing the shield down against the Iron Man mask again and again, not pulling his punches, not holding back after downing him with a magnetic pulse. In that moment, had he truly wanted Tony dead? Would he have stopped at all if he had? And would _he_ still be alive if Tony had died then?

 _I wish you had killed me if it had saved you,_ he thought, letting Extremis guide his movements.

By the time, Tony had dismantled the device Kang had left, the HUD was blinking red around him. Extremis was bleeping warning after warning. And there was the security footage from upstairs where Steve was on his knees…

“Get up,” Tony muttered. “This isn’t where you…”

His throat went dry. He couldn’t even think about it. 

_EXPLOSION OF SECONDARY DEVICE IN 0.04s_ , Extremis announced helpfully and Tony had no time even with the enhanced speed of his thought processes to pinpoint the location of that one before it went up. His eyes were glued to the security footage playing in the upper left corner of his HUD. He watched in horror as the windows and glass doors blew out, raining shards down on Steve who could barely hold up the shield to protect himself, before a cascade of flame engulfed the rooms. 

The floors were shaking.

“Steve!” 

Every other thought was drowned out by the panic that gripped him. His servos screeched as he pushed himself off the ground and into flight, navigating the tumbling, shaking floors while the burning building shook as if it wanted to collapse. Extremis had already seized control of the sprinkler systems but Tony knew it wouldn’t be enough to put out the flames and in the worst case scenario the weight of the water might help along the collapse if the structure was already compromised.

“Steve! I’m coming!”

He hadn’t realized that he was broadcasting on an Avengers standard frequency until he heard Steve reply: “Tony? That you? Don’t come! It’s...”

Steve sounded resigned to his fate.

It was un-Steve-like and unnerving and only spurred Tony on to go faster.

“I’m not leaving you!” _Again._

Steve said something muffled and cut the connection. It sounded like: _You already did._

A frustrated sob wrenched itself from Tony’s throat. He had and yet he had been the one left behind.

“Steve!” he kept shouting and finally he was there — floor 47, east side of the building — Steve was on his feet by now, bleeding from cuts and burns. A shot rang out.

It was the most horrible moment of Tony’s life repeating itself when an enhanced projectile was shot, aiming right for Steve’s forehead. It was the courthouse all over again. Tony pushed the repulsors to their limit, realized that Steve was pushing himself off the ledge and through the broken glass of the floor to ceiling windows, letting himself fall instead of giving the hitman the satisfaction… and Tony rushed after him, hollering his name at the top of his lungs.

For a moment Steve’s eyes were still open, then they closed, as wind and gravity grabbed his body, ripped the shield from him and he nearly bounced off the concrete walls, but Tony had caught up just in time. He had Steve by the hand, letting the repulsors ease them into the motion so he wouldn’t pull Steve’s arm out.

Down on the pavement, letting Steve sink to the ground, he fell down on his knees just staring at Steve’s bloodied face. He was reliving the moment on the courthouse steps that he’d seen over and over again in news footage.

But this wasn’t it.

This Steve was alive.

As he should be, so that time could move on and Steve could die when and how he was supposed to. But Tony had gotten involved more than he should already.

 _What have I done?_ Tony thought to himself. _What the hell did I think I was doing? What the hell do I do now?_

* * *

He took an unconscious Steve to a cheap motel — the kind that Tony Stark very much did _not_ frequent when he was in his right mind and sober, thank you very much. 

Steve was in bad shape and getting him here, hiding the movements from the other Tony out there — it hadn’t been easy. Tony tried not to think about any of that — or the other memories that were threatening to make him sob with anguish while he let his fingers find the familiar fastenings and zippers on Steve’s uniform to peel it off his boy carefully. He tried to focus on the task at hand, not the man, not the skin that he’d touched a thousand times before, not on this body that he knew by heart, and would never get to see again after this. 

He used two appropriated first-aid kits to treat the worst of the wounds, bandaging everything that even with Steve’s accelerated healing would need some time to heal. He just had to hope that Steve’s healing factor would kick in and take care of the rest quickly.

Tired, and with a terrible sense of foreboding he let himself sink into the small armchair by the desk close to the head of the bed.

 _Don’t hang around_ , Reed had warned him over and over again. _Go in. Get it done. Come back._

“I’ll be damned if I leave you like this,” Tony said out loud, but the unconscious man in the bed didn’t stir.

It was probably for the best.

* * *

Sometime during his grief-stricken vigil and berating himself for being here _still_ , Tony must have fallen asleep.

Someone said his name.

He blinked awake, remnants of a nightmare lingering — then he came face to face with Steve who regarded him from his place on the bed, distrust written all over his pale face.

“You’re okay,” Tony breathed, because the relief mingled with the realization that he had saved Steve now but that meant nothing for the future without Captain America that was still ahead for Tony.

“Why?”

“Why are you okay?”

“Why did you save me?”

Tony bit his lip. “You were falling.”

“I know that. I want to know why _you_ would come for me.”

His nails were digging into the soft flesh on the underside of his arms; he needed the pain to ground him, remind him that he wasn’t here to tell the truth or set things right. He could leave now that everything here was settled and time and the multiverse — and in this tiny moment even Steve — were safe. “Wouldn’t you come for me?” he threw back.

Surprise flashed through Steve’s eyes and his gaze settled heavily on Tony’s face, studying his expression. Then he nodded slowly. “Of course I would. Despite everything.” It sounded like a curse more than an admission.

They sat in silence for a bit after that, not looking at each other.

“Am I going to be arrested?” Steve wanted to know. 

It cut like a knife but it was arguably a fair question to ask under the circumstances. 

“No,” Tony said a little too quickly. “This isn’t about… Let’s not talk about registration, please.” He knew he could barely keep the grief out of his voice. Every second he was getting closer to breaking down. “We know how that ends.”

 _God_ , he thought, don’t I know how it ends. What wouldn’t I give to change it?

“Better we don’t,” Steve agreed gruffly and sat up slowly. He was looking over his bandages, making sure his uniform and shield were nearby. 

It was Tony’s cue.

“Well.” Tony blew out a breath and stood up slowly. “I think it’s time for me to leave. You know where to find me if you want to talk after all.”

_Won’t be me waiting for you though. Will never be me again… Because you’re dead and I can’t have you back. God, my younger self should cherish every moment of your hatred..._

He took the jacket of his crumbled three piece suit and shrugged it on. It was for Steve’s benefit more than his own. He could have just called on the armor and hid inside it, but he owed it to Steve to at least hold his gaze and say good-bye properly for the very last time.

Silently, he made his way to the door then.

But even in his state, Steve was fast. He was out of the bed and nearly by the door before Tony could even reach for the handle. 

“Wait!” Steve shouted and grabbed him by the wrist, twisted his arm around until Tony had to look up and meet his gaze.

“Let. Me. Go.” Tony said firmly. He had to go. This had gone too far already. It was time to run.

“We need to talk —”

“We tried that already. Over and over. Didn’t work out. Let’s just —” he said and tried to free his arm.

“Why did you save me Tony? You haven’t reported me either. What’s going on? What’s your play?”

“Let go of me, Rogers. This isn’t —” his heart was racing. God, he needed to leave before he decided he was going to stay right here and let Steve wring his neck… Before it got easier to say something he’d regret than to return to a saved future that still lacked the most important person in it.

“You’re risking a lot to help me, Tony. So why?”

“Can’t I just —? You know why!” he shot back. Steve didn’t budge, did not let go of his arm or let him make a move towards the door. Of course, he could break free if he wanted to. All he needed was the armor and Cap stood no chance of holding Iron Man by the arm.

They stared at each other, both aware that this was a stand off only because both of them allowed it. 

Tony took the moment to trace the lines of Steve’s face with his eyes, trying to commit every angry line to memory.

But the anger was bleeding right out of Steve’s expression.

“You still care,” he said and took in a deep and audible breath. “I still matter to you. But then why — Tony? Tell me why.”

By now, Tony was shaking. When had he started to shake? Was he crying? No. But he could feel himself breaking, shattering under Steve’s gaze.

 _How could you let me die if you still loved me?_ Steve’s voice asked at the back of his mind. _How could you betray me? How can you go now and betray me again?_

There was blood clouding Tony’s vision and he couldn’t get the pictures of Steve’s assassination or the withered body on the slab out of his mind. The memories were getting too much… His chest ached. He couldn’t breathe.

“Tony? Look at me! Say something!”

He obeyed. He owed it to Steve to face him, didn’t he? 

“I miss you. I miss us. And everything we had between us,” he said in a broken whisper. “You can never know how much I miss you.” I will always miss you, he added in his thoughts.

“I still love you, Tony. You’re still the most important thing in my life. Even now. I know you think you’re doing the right thing. But I can’t — This isn’t —”

Tony smiled sadly, this time he knew he wasn’t just shaking but sobbing and there were tears pricking at his eyes, threatening to fall.

_He still loved me and I let him die._

Then Steve's lips were on his. The sobs got stuck in Tony’s throat and he kissed back eagerly and like nothing else in the world mattered — because _really_ nothing else did. This was just another stolen moment that didn’t belong to him anymore but he grasped it with all the strength he had left.

A moment that had never happened would be the only thing carrying him through a life lacking Steve. 

The thought made him sob and Steve’s arms wrapped around him.

“If this is so terrible then why aren’t we talking?” he asked urgently.

“You’re the one walking out on me — “ Tony accused because Steve had walked out on him every time they’d argued about registration — but then he stared at Steve grief-stricken and panicked. “This isn’t. I can’t. Let me go.”

“I can’t stand not being with you. I can’t stand being with you either when you’re fighting for this —” 

“Steve,” he said, “I mean it. I can’t — There’s something —”

“Stay here. Let’s talk now. Let’s fix this,” Steve insisted with the stubbornness that was part of the Captain America charm.

Tony’s phone buzzed and he extracted himself from Steve. It was a text from himself. 

_You’re still here? Do you know where Cap is?_

_Of course_ , Tony thought. _He’s me. He’s worried too. And he’s been trying to keep tabs on me and Steve both._

An idea was forming at the back of his mind and it was a bad idea, a _terrible idea_ , the universe-breaking-kind of bad idea that should not be entertained even for a second. He couldn’t help it though.

The risk was worth it.

“Steve,” he said softly. “I have to go. Stay safe, okay? I miss you so much...”

Steve grabbed his arms again, pulled him in for a hug and a kiss. “I’m not leaving you.”

Tears spilled over and rolled down Tony’s cheeks but he tried to smile through them. “You already did,” he whispered and kissed Steve’s cheeks.

Extremis answered the text without him even touching the phone: _He’s safe for now. He still loves you. Even when you fight and are on opposite sites. Even when he’s too angry to tell you. Don’t lose sight of that. Don’t lose_ him. _We couldn’t live with that._

The other Tony would know where to find Steve now if he wanted to.

He kissed Steve one last time before he rushed out the door, called up the armor and took off.

He had his own present to return to.

And he could only hope that it was a better present than the one that he had left behind.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Encounter (A Stitch in Time Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29435115) by [Neverever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/pseuds/Neverever)




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